


delicate

by mornen



Series: I see a darkness in you [4]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Breastfeeding, Children, Family, Gen, Nightmares, PTSD, Paranoia, death paranoia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:15:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25039855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mornen/pseuds/mornen
Summary: Elrond has a hard time believing his sons won't disappear
Relationships: Celebrían/Elrond Peredhel
Series: I see a darkness in you [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2025992
Comments: 10
Kudos: 37





	delicate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [survivorcurse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/survivorcurse/gifts).



The candle burns out, and the smoke goes up all at once, spinning out wild into the dark room. The half moon is orange as it sinks behind the ridge of the valley in the west. Elrond holds his sons in his arms. He sang them to sleep and then never put them down. They lie, curled together, against his arm. Celebrían sleeps as well. Her hair lies like a mist over the fur blanket.

It is cold for March. Everything lies frozen outside. The river runs beneath thick ice. It was bright out with the moonlight cast over the blue snow, but it grows dark now with the moon setting and the candle burnt out.

Elrond bends to kiss his boys. His hair sweeps over them, settling them into a deeper sleep. They were born almost one year ago now. He keeps expecting them to disappear. Both of them. (One of them.) He traces their features. They have little noses, little dimples. He rests his finger against the dip in Elrohir’s top lip. He is breathing. They are both breathing. He kisses them both.

He needs to sleep. His head is heavy with sleep. He gets up. Celebrían wakes when he stands. She holds out her arms, and Elrond passes the babies over. Celebrían lies them one beside the other on the bed. Elrohir stirs, and he stares at them both for a moment before falling back asleep.

Elrond adds wood to the fire. The flames spring up to consume the log. They light the room orange. His heart tightens, but the children are still there when he turns back to them. He slides off his dressing gown and gets into bed beside them. Celebrían takes his hand.

Elrond bows his head against his pillow and weeps. He wishes he wasn’t this worn out. That he could hold himself together better. He has already lost so much. If he lost them, he doesn’t think he could take it. This love is tremendous. It bleeds out of his heart into every part of his body. It pushes out into his fëa and makes him a new person. But this new person could break. He cannot remember the last time he could break. He spent his life learning to bend. Learning to pick himself up from the floor. Learning to bow his head beneath the wind. But now, he could break.

He can’t imagine losing them. It’s all he imagines.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says when Celebrían touches his face. ‘I don’t mean to cry. I’m so tired.’

‘Elrond,’ she says softly. ‘Elrond, sleep.’ She kisses him, and he obeys.

He loses them in his dreams. He touches them, and they turn to mist. He touches them, and they evaporate. He touches them, and they are as cold as this long winter and do not open their eyes.

Elrond wakes, and they are warm beside him. Elrond is hot and then cold all at once. He is damp with sweat. A nightmare. Another nightmare. (Please be just a nightmare.) He shakes them gently, and Elladan wakes with a cry. Elrohir wails. He kisses them. Elrohir keeps crying.

Celebrían wakes and reaches for Elrohir. She lifts him against her chest and holds her breast between her fingers. She tickles his nose and lips with her nipple until he opens his mouth and then pulls him closer. He latches on and stares up at her with wide grey eyes. Celebrían smiles down at him. Elrond could break with how beautiful they are.

He kisses Celebrían.

‘I’m sorry.’

Celebrían touches his wet shirt. It aches how he pains her. He kisses her again. He holds her face between his hands and kisses her thrice. He shivers from his cold sweat, and she touches his cheek.

Elrond slides off the damp nightgown and wraps himself in his dressing gown. He lifts Elladan to his bare chest. He sits beside Celebrían. The sheets are still damp where he lay. Elladan stares up at him. Elrond presses his face to the top of his head. The sun is rising. Frost has bloomed across all the windows.

* * *

Please. Please, don’t be gone. Elrond throws the door open. He runs to the cradle and falls to his knees beside it. It could be empty. (It could be empty.) He left them to sleep for an hour in the afternoon, and nothing has entered the room, but it could be empty.

There they lie on a white sheet in the clear afternoon. The sunlight in the room is soaked green from leaves, filtered through white curtains.

Elrond covers his face with his hands. He is racked with sobs. He cries and he cannot stop himself, and he doesn’t even know why he is crying.

The room is dappled with soft sunlight. His babies sleep peacefully. The cradle rocks. It is summer. It is summer. It is summer.

Please.

He kneels beside the cradle crying until he is too weak to kneel and then he lies beside it. He lies with his arms stretched out, touching the cradle, and he rocks it, and he listens to them breathe.

* * *

It is a reaching fear. It lingers. It comes in high waves that fold over him and pin him down. His heart is shot through. He’s never loved anyone like this before, and he will die if he loses them. (He loses everyone.)

Elrond sits on the grass beneath an elm tree as Elladan and Elrohir chase each other up and down the hill. Elladan wrestles Elrohir down and tickles him. The grass is deep green in the heat of August.

Elrohir wrenches away his brother and flies past Elrond. Elrond catches him as he runs by and drags him into his arms.

‘Ada!’ Elrohir cries and tilts his head back all the way to watch the world upside down. Elrond reaches for Elladan. Elladan laughs and jumps back. Elrond is too quick for him and catches him up beside his brother. The weight of them means they are real.

He wonders if it bothers them that they are never left alone. He has a vague concept of privacy, but he was never in a position to develop a full sense of it. They won’t either.

But Elladan sees ghosts, and ghosts are real, and the ones he sees might be real also. Elrond does not know. But they reach for Elladan in the dark, and they walk the long corridors in the night. (Evil things do not come into the secret valley.) Elladan still sees them: pale ghosts with empty eyes.

Elladan covers his face with his hand. He smiles out at Elrond from behind spread fingers. A spear could not pin him as strongly as his child’s smile.

‘Please,’ he whispers to Eru or the Valar or anyone who might spare him a pain he could not take, ‘please, if I can keep anything, let me keep them.’

He lies down and holds them on top of him, and they play with his hair, and the world is leaping with green light turning golden. They kiss him. He holds them. He could never let go.

A cuckoo cries.


End file.
